PSA: Stranger Things fans are not happy about this season 5 detail
Stranger Things fans, we have some good news and some bad. Last night, Netflix hosted its annual Tudum event, which celebrates all things on the streaming platform, plus shares exclusives from its biggest shows. As we all know, Stranger Things is one of them, so it was the perfect place for a few exciting announcements.
From a brief sneak peek of what's to come in season five, a highlight reel of some of the most memorable moments from past episodes, and a cameo from Millie Bobby Brown, aka Eleven, Netflix also revealed when fans can expect to catch the new series. And this is where the mixed news comes in.
While the platform did announce that the new episodes are just around the corner, they also shared that they'll be dropping in three parts. Yep, you heard that right: THREE. The first will enter the void on November 26, the second will follow on Christmas Day, and the last will be released on New Year's Eve. Basically, that's bad news for anyone who loves to binge-watch a series and hates waiting for episodes to drop in instalments.
Following the news, fans of the show have taken to social media to share their frustration, with many sharing funny memes to express their disappointment.
"Stranger Things season 5 is three parts??? absolutely not," one person said, as another penned: "You're telling me the 4th season of Stranger Things came out in 2022, the final season is coming out in Fall of this year, and Netflix has the nerve to split it up in THREE PARTS?!?!?!?"
Elsewhere, someone else echoed: "THE LAST SEASON OF STRANGER THINGS IS BEING SPLIT INTO THREE PARTS ARE YOU KIDDING ME," while a fourth screamed: "Stranger Things s5 broken up into three parts this just isn't serious."
Stranger Things is currently streaming on Netflix.
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Forbes
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The subscription package also gives them points every month that can be used to buy movie theater tickets and access new releases. The viewer-friendly approach has made the streaming service provider, which is owned by listed U-Next Holdings, an established name in Japan. But Yasuhide Uno, the company's 61-year-old president and CEO, who built $2.6 billion (market cap) U-Next from a troubled family business, is eyeing much more. For one, he's determined to more than triple company revenue to ¥1 trillion ($7 billion) by 2035. 'It's not just a number to me,' says Uno in an interview in his spartan office at the company's Tokyo headquarters near bustling Meguro station. 'If we maintain 10% [annual] growth, that trillion-yen target will be achievable.' Lately, U-Next appears to be on track. The company reported double-digit growth in the fiscal year through August 2024, with revenue up 18% to ¥326.8 billion and net profit increasing 40% to ¥15.4 billion. The company says it expects to maintain the momentum in the current fiscal year, with a revenue target of ¥360 billion and net profit of ¥16.7 billion. Bullish investors have pushed up U-Next's share price nearly 40% over the past year. That boosted Uno's net worth by roughly the same percentage to $1.6 billion, placing him at No. 34 in the ranks of Japan's richest. U-Next has other businesses that are even bigger contributors to operating profit than entertainment, though they are less visible. The company provides a range of services such as piped music, point-of-sale machines, IT and cloud services, and catering robots to some 860,000 stores, restaurants, salons, hotels and hospitals across the country. It also supplies broadband services and green energy to businesses and households, and has lately expanded into payment services and real estate. 'From the time I first met Uno-san in the early days of the internet boom in Japan, he had a vision for the transformative power of connectivity.' Analysts say U-Next is less vulnerable to domestic and global headwinds as the bulk of its revenue comes from subscriptions or term contracts. 'About 80% of its revenue is recurring. These services have the nature of continuous sales growth as the number of customers increases,' Aizawa Securities analyst Naoto Takahashi wrote in an April note to investors. Uno's ambition for U-Next goes beyond hard numbers. He wants to cement his legacy by making the company an icon of Japan Inc. 'I often talk about wanting to become a company that is needed and represents Japan, a company that is known and trusted, and one that Japanese have high hopes for and love,' he says. Shunichi Oda for Forbes Asia It's been a tumultuous two-plus decades for Uno since he stepped into his late father's shoes in 1998. 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'I think he thought that as I had already started a company and was getting ready to list it, that I was prepared as a manager.' Uno was anything but prepared for what lay ahead. The cables being used to relay piped music had been strung on utility poles without permission from the government or utility companies. Moreover, the company had piled on ¥80 billion in debt, backed by personal guarantees from his father. It took Uno a couple of years to secure permission from the then- Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for the over 7 million poles the company was using—and put ¥50 billion toward accumulated fees. Repaying debt took much longer. For the fiscal year ended August 2024 With a cleaner slate, Uno could focus on expansion beyond the legacy piped music business. In 2000 he renamed the company as Yusen Broad Networks to reflect his next move: upgrading the cable network to introduce what it says was the world's first commercial optical fiber broadband service—starting in Tokyo and eventually extending it nationwide. Uno strongly believed that the internet would 'change society' and that video distribution was the next big thing. 'From the time I first met Uno-san in the early days of the internet boom in Japan, he had a vision for the transformative power of connectivity, especially for how streaming services could revolutionize entertainment,' says Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and CEO of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, by email. 'He's one of the most relentlessly driven leaders I know.' Mikitani and Uno collaborated to start a paid content platform in 2001 called Showtime—six years before Netflix debuted its streaming service—that showed movies, dramas, anime and sports. (In 2009, Rakuten bought out Usen's 50% stake in the platform for ¥1.8 billion, which by then had 60,000 titles and 1.1 million subscribers.) Uno doubled down on streaming, and in 2005 he changed his company's name to Usen, launching a free (advertiser supported) video content streaming service called GyaO that offered local TV programs and movies as well as overseas fare. Two years later, he launched a paid subscription service called GyaO Next, the predecessor to U-Next. (GyaO caught the attention of Yahoo! Japan, which spent ¥530 million to acquire a 51% stake in 2009 with the aim to build one of the nation's largest video distribution platforms.) Usen began to unravel alongside the global financial crisis. In a two-year period through August 2009, the company posted losses totalling over ¥113 billion, mainly due to Uno's aggressive acquisitions that included Intelligence and karaoke-equipment and music distributor BMB, which resulted in write-downs. By 2010, the company's lenders finally had enough and Uno was forced to step down. 'More is learned from people who have experienced various setbacks than from executives who've had straight line success.' Uno had listed Intelligence on Jasdaq in 2000, made it a Usen subsidiary in 2009, but then had to sell it to PE firm KKR a year later for ¥32.5 billion. According to Hiroshi Kodama's 2020 book, An Entrepreneur's Courage: The Rise and Fall of Yasuhide Uno's Ventures, he was under heavy pressure from banks to repay the loans because of concerns over hitting lending covenants and to quit. Uno admitted in local media interviews that he struggled to cope in the aftermath. Uno now says his frankness is appreciated. 'People often tell me that they were encouraged,' he says. 'More is learned from people who have experienced various setbacks than from executives who've had straight-line success.' At the time of his departure from Usen, Uno negotiated a ¥10 million deal with the company to acquire the money-losing businesses of subscription-based streaming and personal broadband services. These two businesses were housed in a company called U-Next, which was spun off from Usen. Luckily for Uno the timing worked out. With internet penetration in Japan picking up pace, both businesses gained traction. In 2014, the company was stable enough for him to pull off a public listing of U-Next on the Tokyo Stock Exchange startup bourse Mothers. In 2017, Uno orchestrated a complicated merger to reclaim control over Usen as well as his CEO's position by leveraging his nearly two-thirds stake in U-Next and the roughly 30% shares he still owned in Usen. He ended up eventually with about 70% of the combined Usen-Next Holdings, which last year he renamed as U-Next Holdings. (Uno now holds a stake of under 60%.) 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